Using Data as a Springboard for Improvement with Peter Kazanjy

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Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head over to patreon.com inside sales excellence. Now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And I'm going to start with a bold statement. Numbers don't lie. But salespeople do. So one of the things that I have experienced in my career, right, is this idea around is sales is SaaS a numbers game? And so often when you ask people this question, there's a hesitancy to say yes, when in reality the answer is yes. But what people forget is behind every number is a person, a behavior, a process, and a skill. And what great leaders are able to do is not talk about what the numbers are, but how to change the numbers to get the results that they're looking for. And that is why I am so pumped to have Peter Kazanji on the call with me today. He is the co founder at Atrium, the data driven sales management tool. And he and I speak the same nerdy data driven language when it comes to sales and sales leadership. So we're going to be getting into the numbers, but also more important, how to change them. Peter, my man, welcome to the show.

You nailed it, man. Preach. I'm just gonna sit here silently while you just like proselytize. I love it. It's amazing.

I'm told the only reason can't show up to the show anymore is just for the intro. They're like, I just want to hear the intro about me and with me and then I'll deuce out from there. So here's where I'm gonna start, man, with the question is, you know, you get to look at a lot of companies. I have been blessed to like lead quite a few, but now I'm consulting a lot of companies and it still is to me how un data driven a lot of companies are. So I actually want to open with this into why do you think that is? What seems to hold companies and leaders back when it comes to leveraging and using data.

Yeah. You know, I think that it's just a new thing, man. It's just a new thing. And, like, new things take time for people to get good at them. Like, I mean, look like you have a substantial background in competitive athletics and coaching and what have you. And the same sort of stuff, like, went down in the advanced kind of professional athletics and is now permeating down to college and high school and so on and so forth. But, like, just back in the day, you didn't have the data capture in order to do, like, sweet analytics on basketball or, like, football or, like soccer or whatever. But now that you do. But now you need the humans who can, like, interpret that, right? And, like, the same was true. Like, you know, use the Golden State warriors as an example, right? Like when we were doing research with. When we were doing research for Atrium early on, you know, back in 2016, I actually interviewed the head of analytics at the Golden State warriors, right? And this is like, back in the day. And it was so funny. He was like, oh, yeah, we're doing all this great stuff. And I was like, okay, well, like, where do you guys use it? Do you use it to, like, you know, coaching in the game, etc. He's like, no, no, no, the coaches don't let us do that. He was like. And I was like, what do you guys. He's like, yeah, well, we do it in training and we use it in recruiting. Now, again, this was like six years ago, right? And it was like. Because, like, the, like, the gray beards on the coaching staff or whatever at that time were kind of like, I don't know, get out of here with your, like, math, kid. Like, you know, go kick rocks. And so it's just a, you know, it's just a. You know, it's a process over time. This is what we see in our customer base is like, oftentimes the younger managers, right, who are like, who came up with whoop and came up with, like, Fitbit and came up with Peloton and what have you, they're way more open to this and they're like, more. Way more data native. Then you have, like, the older folks who are like, okay, I gotta get on the train. But then you just have people who are like, okay, you're never gonna change and you're just gonna have to retire. Yeah. So it's just the process.

I feel like when you told that story for the Golden State warriors that, like, half the people in Revops just. They felt that in their chest where it's like, yeah, here's the data, but we're not going to use that. That's all I think of is like, hey, we did some analysis, go. This isn't get out of here nerd science. Get out of here, get out of.

Here, get out of here, nerd.

Now it's interesting because, you know, as I've gone through this, there are things that I was like, I just figured these were basics. I just kind of thought like everybody tracked some of these things and that actually wasn't the case. To your, to your point, right? Like, and so if you think about like people listening, going, well, man, I don't actually know if I'm data driven. What are some telltale signs? What are some signs of you're using data the right way in your org?

Yeah, I think the most important thing there is to your point earlier about it's not about the numbers, it's about using them to identify shortfalls and areas of outperformance and then change behaviors and coach appropriately. Because it's like having access to data, like a wall of charts, just, you know, shits and giggles is like, it's not useful, right? Like we're here to say, hey, sdr, you are not multi threading sufficiently. Like, and I know this because the number of contacts you're engaging on a per account basis is substantially smaller than the other SDRs on the team. I need you to put time on your calendar to then do blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like I need you to select up like three, at least three contacts that you're going to engage per account that we're going after. And I want you to like, you know, email me at the end of the day every time you do it or whatever. Like it's the changing the behavior. So, so then the question is like, okay, well like how do you do that? And so usually what that means is like having an operating rhythm, right? Like, and we all have our operating rhythms, like you know, team meeting on Monday and we got our, you know, stand ups on. I'm like talk about SDRs first, right? We got our maybe we got our morning stand up, we've got our new stand up or whatever and then we got our one on what, maybe a half hour, one on one like every two weeks or what have you. Cool. So there's your operating rhythm. Is there metrics in that? Are you looking at stuff in your prep? As an example, I have this, my team meeting, Google Doc has a template at the top and I just clone it out just like, okay, cool. What were the wins for last week were the metric outcomes? And then it's also information, like, what new product shift? What does CS want to have the AE team or the SDR team know about? But then littered all throughout is just like a bunch of hyperlinks to various reports and various dashboards. And the same is true with one on ones as well. I think the important, you know that you're data driven when you're starting to weave this information into your operating rhythm. And if you're not, then it's probably a good indicator, right? Like, if it's one of those things where it's like, oh, I have to. I guess now is the time that I need to go over to that dashboard. Right? Like, if it's not like on your calendar and it's not woven into your rhythm, it's not going to happen. Right? Just like in sports, right? Like, you know, after the game we've got film review, right? And like, you know, after. And then like, you go perform, like. And then maybe what we do is we like look at stats on. I forget, Katie, what was. You're a baseball guy, is that right? Or is it. Yeah, right. Like, I mean, I was a pitcher growing up, and so, like, as a pitcher, like when you're not pitching, what you would have to do is you would do stats on all the other pitchers, right? And then we would review it on, you know, at Monday practice. So again, it was just like in the rhythm. And if it's not like, this is probably a good place to start is just like, start putting in the rhythm because otherwise it's not gonna happen.

Yeah, I love the call out there of like, you know, putting it where people are, right? So in one on ones, in the team meetings, in the huddles. Because funny enough, and I know when I first started saying this to my manager, I was like, my manager's on my team. I was like, I'm. I don't stop talking about results with me. I know the results. I have the dashboard. I need you to talk to me about what's causing the results. And so with the team, too, we had one slide with the results. Here's where we're at with revenue. Here's where with Pipeline, we spent most of the time talking about the metrics behind them. What are the drivers?

Right?

Okay. Revenue's low. Why? Pipelines up. Why? And what I would tell my leadership team is if you can't tell me why, from a data perspective, something improved, you're getting lucky. I need you to know why. Right. And so what we joked about is like don't bring me the data, I want the diamonds in the data. Like I want the diamonds in there. Like what's the good stuff coming out of this? And so if you think about a revenue org, we're going to get very straightforward here. What are some of the key metrics they have to be tracking? Like if, if you think about a revenue old org from top funnel down, what are some of those key metrics that an org should be tracking at a team org and individual basis?

Yeah, for sure. I mean it's funny that you're. I actually have these like metrics driver like cheat sheets sitting next to my, sitting next to me on my desk here. We actually, we just like give them out to people. I forget you can actually find them on Atrium's website. You can just like grab them on there. But yeah, I mean I think so like we can start with, we can start with the SDR team first. I mean I think the first thing first there is like there's varying levels of maturity and so like you know, if you're not very mature right now, the important thing is to like not overthink it and instead just kind of like start right? So like use an SDR organization as an example. Probably the most simplistic things that you would want to be paying attention to there would be like yeah, raw activity level. So like you know, call volume, email volume, things like that. In addition to that you would want to be paying attention to unique number of accounts that are being interacted with. Right? Unique number of contacts. Because this is where people can kind of get, can get tripped up is by doing tons and tons of activity, not across enough at bats, not enough accounts. And those are kind of be like the table stakes and of course your outputs, right? Opportunity creation or meeting creation or whatever it is that you are kind of kpiing on there. Then one of the non obvious things that people really get kind of tripped up on is not sufficiently paying attention to net new accounts interacted with or net new contacts interacted with. Right. And so because oftentimes what can happen is SDRs can, it's like stale accounts, right? They can have you know, their couple hundred or like, you know there are a couple hundred accounts that they're going after and they can just be like, it's kind of like flogging a dead horse. And so what you want to make sure is that there's like ongoing inflow that's going on there. So like New accounts that are being interacted with, new contacts that are being interacted with. So those are all like quantity metrics right there. And then I think you were kind of mentioning earlier, oftentimes people kind of get like, wrapped around the axle, like, oh, it's an art. It's an art, et cetera. You can't, like, you know, you can't measure my style here. You actually can, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. There's quality metrics, right? And so oftentimes people kind of just like, more volume, more volume, more volume, more activity, et cetera. But what you want to make sure, like, the success in sales is all about a high quantity of high quality selling behavior. And so there's also a number of metrics that are really important in order for characterizing the level of quality of the behavior in question. So again, going back to SDRs, those would be things like email reply rate. And that's like a good echo. It's not actually measuring the quality directly, but it's like an echo of the qualities. Because if somebody has an email reply rate problem, that could probably mean. That could mean a variety of things. It could mean that they're not selecting good contacts, right? They're targeting bad people. It can mean that, you know, their, their subject lines are poor because they're not getting opens. It can mean that their messaging is poor because they're not eliciting responses. It can mean a variety of things, but it would indicate that there's something off there. So that would be an example of a quality metric. And there's others as well, like, you know, the ratio between opportunities created and the number of accounts that are interacted with. Is somebody just, like, spraying and praying and not getting anything to. To boil, right? Like, is your batting average low? And then the last kind of quality metric that I really like is the number of activities that somebody that is required by an SDR in order to create an opportunity. Right? So it's a measure of, again, of efficiency. And some of those, like, some of those are more simplistic, and some of them are more complicated. You know, one of the things that we really like here at Atrium, this is why we. We've invested so much time and energy in making it take, like, three minutes to turn on an Atrium account and have access to, like, over a hundred KPIs that are really impactful for SDRs and for account executives. Because a lot of times people are like, man, I really want to do those things. But, like, that sounds like a lot of work. And also, like, my rev Ops team is like totally underwater. And like they keep telling me that they're going to give me these things but they never get around to it. So that's on the SDR side, on the AE side. I mean it's kind of like a similar situation, right? Where again the kind of raw volume that you, you would want to be paying attention to there and this is kind of like contingent on sales motion. But is, you know the, like the, the, the AE equivalent of an SD of like the SDR's email or calling is, is the meeting, right? Like the fundamental unit of, of of customer of like you know, selling behavior by an account executive is a customer facing meeting. So starting with that, making sure that you're having, you know, like you're measuring the number of meetings that are happening, measuring the number of opportunities that are in pipe for a given, like how loaded they are. Because oftentimes what people do is they pay attention to the pipeline. Like the amount of pipeline that folks have, that's important. But like the number of ops that are like on their plate, are they too high, are they too low? Usually people will say that they're too low, but they can be too high as well. And then it's a similar. And then measures around like are people working those ops? So like number of touches on ops on a, you know, on a weekly basis or a monthly basis or what have you. And then then like those are all the like really, really, really basic ones. And then you kind of have like a similar thing around inflow, right? So are people having new ops that are flowing into their pipe? Kind of like the equivalent of engaging with new accounts. Are people having new ops that are coming into their pipe or are they having like stagnation there? And then on the quality front, like obviously win rate is the most important kind of like metric there, but then you can kind of get more granular there and say hey, are people engaging? Like are they sufficiently multi threading in their accounts, right? Like how many contacts are they engaging on a per account basis? That obviously is also important for SDRs. What are the conversion rates between stages? Right? Especially like once you have like north of five account executives who are doing the same sales motion, then you start having like enough data or enough sample where you can start like comparing people and can say oh okay, like this guy right here, he's got like a problematic conversion rate out of proposal as compared to everybody else. Like he's way lower man. He's probably like not respecting, he's probably like not respecting exit criteria. There. And he's getting things into, you know, he's putting things in a proposal way prematurely, which of course is going to, like, screw up your forecast and all sorts of other stuff there. Right. So those are kind of like the more sophisticated measures there. Again, these are the sort of things that, like, you know, our customers really like the fact that you can just turn it on and it's like, ready to rock. Because a lot of these things are pretty much impossible to create in Salesforce reporting or in BI unless you have like a full blown data team, in which case, like, you know, good luck getting their time. So those are some of the metrics to kind of pay attention to there.

And I think it's so important as he's going through those, y', all, as you're listening, it's important to have those, but you also make sure you're breaking them down for the individual and the team.

Because I see exactly like.

Because I see a lot of. One of my favorite data quotes now that I've been using more and more is the average man does not exist. And I love using this. Go for it.

Yeah, well, we say a similar thing. We say, like, averages lie because they hide things. I love it. Keep going.

They hide it. Because if I have a team of 30 and the average close rate is 30%, how many of those 30 actually have a 30% close rate? You're lucky if it's one to two. You're going to have above and below. And yet teams run off the averages all the time.

Preach.

And it drives me nuts. And I'm sure, like, this, this could get dangerous because we are both very passionate about this where it's like, you hear people like, okay, you need 3x pipeline coverage. And I say, how do you know? Like, well, that should be enough. Well, okay, so 3x only works if your close rate is 33% and your deal size is proper. So do you know those numbers? And it's like, well, of course not. Right? And so it's just hilarious to me, like, because averages will trip people up and I want to spend on there. There was just two metrics that you didn't mention on the SDR side. And I know you were saying a little bit higher level that I did want to call people out is the connect rate and conversion rate, those quality metrics of like, okay, how many dials does it take to get someone on the phone? And then every time I get someone on the phone, what's that conversion rate to the meeting? There's that quality that art Measurements again around.

Yeah, it's a win rate. It's like, did you win the call? Right?

That's the SDR win rate metric, right? It's like, hey, I got here on how many do I need to get to. To get to that. Yes. And go through it, right? Because if we look at the flow, it's like, you know, you have your results. Great results have already happened. Those are in the past. I can't change those. Metrics are the lead indicator to a result, and behaviors are the leading indicator to a metric. And so where I want to take this next is like, okay, I start getting this data. What do I do with it? Because you. And you see this as I know you, you see this more than I do. You'll talk to these teams and they have this data, but nothing's being done. So, like, how do I work with the data to actually then make improvements?

Mm. Yeah. And that's where the. This is why, like, I mean, this is why at Atrium we call. We call ourselves a data driven sales management solution. Because it's not about, like, kind of hate the A word, like analytics. Like, oh, that's for like analysts to do analysis over there versus, like, nah, bro, we're here to manage. We're here to manage, we're here to coach, right? And it's a mechanism. This is something that helps us a lot. Like, helps us do that better. And so then the question is like, okay, well, what we need to be doing is we need to be having coaching conversations and doing. And doing the work of management, right? Like, that's why we earn the big bucks, right? And so what that means is there's a couple great books that I really enjoy on this topic. There is Corey Bray and Hillman. Sori's five Secrets of the Sales Coach I really enjoy does a good job talking about, like, having a coaching rhythm. We talked about this earlier about making sure that there's data involved in that. But you can have all the data you want. But if you don't say like, hey, Katie. So here's the. Hey, good to see you, man. Fresh hat. Love it. So, you know, I was preparing for our one on one today and, you know, I was reviewing our metrics and I noticed that, you know, I noticed that you had this multi. That the number of contacts that you're engaging on a per account basis is a little light as compared to your. As compared to your peers. Do you have a sense of what might be driving that? Right now we're having a coaching conversation that is informed by data. Right. I'm not coming off the top rope and I'm like, oh, you know, get out of here. Like, you know, you're the worst or whatever. But we're now having a coaching conversation. Like, oh, that's. I didn't, I am. Oh yeah, totally. I had no idea. You know, Bob, who sits next to me told me that that's the way that you're doing. Oh, got it. So you're. Maybe I need to refresh you on the rules of engagement where we have an SLA in our organization where when you pull an account into your name, you're supposed to select, you know, three to five contacts out of zoom info before you start going. Oh my gosh, I had no idea. Hey, great. Okay, awesome. Well, so what we're going to do now is I'm going to ask you to go ahead and do that for the next week. And what we're going to do is we're going to come back together, right, like, because we got this metric right here and like I'm going to put it in the calendar invite, we're going to come back like and I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and hit this hyperlink a couple times throughout the week, take a screenshot of it and go ahead and slack it to me. Okay? Okay, cool man. Like I'm on it. We just had a coaching conversation, right? A data informed coaching conversation where we diagnosed a potential issue, we co created a solution, like we investigated what the issue was and then we came up with a proposed solution which then. And a timeline on which to fix it. Yes, right. And so I think the challenge is like the first step is like doing the data piece. The second step is like having the coaching conversation. And because I mean you see this all the time, man. You get a lot of, especially like SDR teams, a lot of like first time managers, 26 years old, you know, 28 years old, oftentimes managing people who used to be their peers. It can kind of like make people clench. And so this is why one of the things that we kind of, we saw this across our customers and we realized that there was an opportunity for us to just like help them better manage their teams, like get, get better at management. So we actually work with, I'm sure, you know, Richard Harris. We actually work with Richard Harris. We have a monthly manager boot camp that we just make available to our, to, to all of our customers and actually we make it available to the community too. If anyone wants to sign up it's just@atriumhq.com Bootcamp because often like people managers don, like new managers don't get coached on coaching. I know it's kind of meta, right. But they don't get like taught how to have those, those kind of like coaching conversations and hard conversations. And you know, it's like, it's not hard for like old fogies like you and me because we've been doing it forever. But it's tough for some folks. And if you, and if they don't have the muscle, then like, you know, the behaviors aren't going to change. The behaviors aren't going to change then like the outputs are not going to change.

No. And I love that because it fits right in with what my leadership teams, how we run. So the managers reported up to me the number one metric per rep and what they were doing about it.

Right.

That was what the manager one on one structure looked like. Like we cover our team performance and all that. But then what they were reporting up. Okay, Peter, number one metric holding him back from his number is connect rate. And then what are you doing about it? And then we actually built out coaching plan an entire issue diagnos basis chart. So metric by metric, what to look for. And what's funny is every leader listening right now. You already have these checklists, they just live in your head, right? If I, if I just, I could bump into you at 2am on a Saturday morning after five pints and go, hey, I have a rep who has a low close rate. And you'd be like, have you looked at this? Have you looked at. You already have a check?

What's the decision tree? Yeah, it's in your brain.

And so we mapped it out and what that also allowed us to do is the reps could use it too. So the example you gave earlier. So hey Peter, gonna dive into our one on one. Looking at our numbers, the number one issue we're running into, it looks like is conversion rate. So go through the issue diagnosis chart beforehand and come ready to talk to where you think we need to focus to bring that conversion rate up. So now we were using it on both sides, literally metric by metric. It was like an 18 page checklist process, but it helped narrow the focus down like to get it done.

Yep. Yeah, because otherwise you kind of like, you can kind of feel like you're like lost in the woods, like, oh my God, what could it possibly be versus like yo. Okay, cool. Hey ae, it looks like you got a win rate problem here. Oh, okay, cool. Like what could be the upstream causes of that. Well, okay, well, let's look at your pipe hygiene. What's our untouched op situation? What's our stuck op situation look like? It actually looks pretty clean. That's interesting. Okay, cool. You're on top of your stuff, so that's good. Not like Bob over there, man. His pipeline is like pig pen. Right? All right, cool. Let's look at something else. So if it's not a pipe hygiene problem, let's go ahead and look at the conversion rates out of our various stages here. Oh, it looks like we're not getting stuff out of disco, huh? Interesting. Well, let's go ahead and. Let's go ahead and listen to like five of your disco calls here. Oh, okay, cool. So you see at the end of the call there how you're not like scheduling a next step, how you're not making a contract with them for a next step and you're not getting it on the calendar there and instead you're following up by email. That's the problem. That's the problem right there. So, hey, do me a favor here, Frank. I want to make sure that like when you exit, I want you to watch the clock when you're on your calls, and I want you to stop the call when there's still like five to seven minutes left in the call. Right. And I want you to establish next steps right there. And I want you to get a next meeting on the calendar right then and there. Can you do that for me? Yeah, I can totally do that for you. Okay, wonderful. So I want you to do that, but then also what I want you to do is I want you to grab those clips out of chorus or gong right after you're. After you're done, and I just want you to flip them to me right at the end of the day. And we're going to go ahead and we're going to stripe a half hour on your calendar at like 5 from 5 to 5:30. And you're just going to grab those for me because now you know you're committed. Yes. You can't just tell me.

And I love that. I was just going to call this out again and I want you all to go back and listen. Every time he goes into coach mode, I want you to listen to what he does in coach mode because it's a mat. This wasn't a coaching conversation session, but like it's a masterclass of specifics.

Right.

Backed by data non emotional. But I also want you all to catch. He's always asking for some sort of action and call it inspection, where it's like, okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to send me a couple of these calls. You're going to click on this link. You're going to end the call at a certain point. Right. And send in the proof. Because that's always the thing around this, too, is like, and I would talk to my managers about this. I can tell whether you're doing it or not based off if the metric changed.

Yeah.

Did this improve month over month? No. Then I already know either we gave the wrong direction or not. But I want you all to listen because I love the always. There's always something that needs to be done to show progress, not just waiting to see at the end.

Yeah. I.